


As They Could Have Been

by ambicatus_is_my_name



Series: As They Could Have Been Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:47:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7778374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambicatus_is_my_name/pseuds/ambicatus_is_my_name
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchester's lives arent the easiest, but they manage. Really, how much worse could it have been?</p>
            </blockquote>





	As They Could Have Been

Dean barely remembers John Winchester the hunter. All he can think about is Dad, the man who played catch with him in the backyard, the man who tucked him into bed when Mom was feeding Sammy, the man who shoved Sammy into his arms as the world burned around him. John was just a man fueled by vengeance, a man who tried to chase a poltergeist as a novice hunter, and a man who got himself killed when Dean was six. 

So when Sam was fourteen and mentioned that dad was a real bastard, Dean had to walk out of the room to stop himself from smacking the little brat. How could he say that about their father? Yeah sure he might have gotten himself killed but when he was alive he was nothing but good to them.

Dean was too angry to question how Sam would know anything about the man who died when he was just two years old.  
******************************************************************************  
Dean’s first real introduction to the hunter lifestyle came from his Aunt Miriam. She isn’t really their aunt but she was as good as. She would never replace Mom, but then again no one really could. 

Miriam did research for other hunters and look local hunts. That’s how she originally met John. He had gone to her to gain some knowledge about poltergeists: John had only tested his hunter skills with vengeful spirits and was looking to gain more experience. The experience killed him, but Miriam took the children in. They would have been put in the foster care system if it weren’t for her. 

Aunt Miriam owns a house just outside Seattle, Washington. If she catches wind of a local hunt and no other hunters are in the area, she’ll take it on. That’s how Dean got his first experience killing a wendigo that attacked hikers in the Snoqualmie Pass Park when he was sixteen. Dean had begged and begged to be allowed on the hunt. He hated digging through databases and lore and while he could appreciate the need for research, he instantly knew it wasn’t for him. The adrenaline was too addicting.

When they got back to Aunt Miriam’s house, Sam had asked how the wendigo hunt went. Dean gushed for an hour about tracking and killing the wendigo, and bragging about how Aunt Miriam was sure to let him hunt with her from now on. 

It occurred to Dean later that Sam shouldn’t have known the creature was a wendigo. Aunt Miriam and Dean initially thought the monster was a werewolf.  
******************************************************************************  
Sometimes Miriam would take Sam and Dean to visit people involved in the life. During summer and school vacations, Miriam would pack them in her pickup truck and drive to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They tried flying one time but Dean freaked out so bad that they never repeated the experience.

Bobby was an old grump of a man but he had an awesome salvage yard filled with cars. He also had a huge library filled with all sorts of lore on the supernatural, but Dean wasn’t so interested in that. The books and the dead languages were Sam’s field. Where Dean hated pouring over the dusty old books and trying to decipher old Sumarian, Sam loved that nerdy stuff. Sam once told him he likes research because he likes putting puzzles together. Dean hates puzzles.

One time Dean was exploring in the basement with Sam. Bobby stored all sorts of stuff in the basement and Sam thought he could find some treasure. Truthfully, Dean was getting annoyed sitting in the library and since it was pouring rain outside, there was nothing else for them to do but go in the basement. 

Bobby’s basement was shaped in an L: the one half was filled with old dressers, chests, and boxes. The other half was just an empty space. 

Sam was happy and content to explore the dressers and boxes, so Dean went over to the empty space in the basement. There was nothing there except for a huge symbol that looked like a star painted on the floor. He saw shifting shadows, and looked up to see the same symbol carved into the ceiling. There was a screen behind the trap on the ceiling, and a fan turned lazily behind the screen. 

Dean heard a small whimper coming from the stairs: Sammy was looking at the symbol on the floor with wide, six-year-old eyes. Dean moved toward Sam, but the small boy backed up and screamed.

“Please don’t Dean! Don’t put me in there! I’ll be good I swear I’ll be good!”

What the hell?

C’mhere Sammy, there’s nothing to be scared of.” That plan went to hell: Sam started shrieking like a girl when Dean grabbed his arm to bring him to the empty space. Dean immediately let go, worried someone would think Sam was dying or something like that. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Dean never saw Sam run up the stairs faster. They never went exploring in the basement after that.  
******************************************************************************  
They went to the Roadhouse a few times. It was run by a couple, Ellen and William Harvelle, and they had a daughter named Jo. Sam and Dean learned through Aunt Miriam that the Roadhouse served hunters that moved across the country hunting as they saw fit, never staying in one place for long. Dean thought it must be a lonely way to live.

The hunters that visited the Roadhouse kept to themselves. The exception was Gordon Walker. The man was smart, funny, reckless, and daring: Dean thought he was everything he wanted to be in a hunter. Most importantly, Gordon didn’t treat the kids like they were stupid, even though Dean was fourteen, Sam was ten, and Jo was eight. He talked to them about the hunting life and the vampires he killed. It was the coolest thing.

Dean later found Sam crying in the guest bedroom. When Dean asked Sam what was wrong, all Sam would say was Gordon “wants to kill me.”

Didn’t Sam know that hunters would always protect him?  
******************************************************************************  
Dean didn’t know what to do.

Sam was screaming like he was set on fire and he was just sitting in front of the TV and Dean was outside and rushed in the second he heard Sammy and he was grabbing Sam’s flailing arms trying to figure out what the hell was happening-

Sam slumped over like boneless fish, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Dean immediately checked his vitals, dreading to find Sam had died and Dean was the only Winchester left. Dean was relieved to feel a strong heartbeat and that Sam was breathing, but his anxiety grew when Sam didn’t wake up.

Aunt Miriam found him five minutes later sobbing over Sam’s prone body.  
******************************************************************************  
The doctors didn’t know what to do. There was nothing wrong with Sam: no injures, no broken bones, no internal bleeding, nothing.

Except for the fact that he screamed like a banshee and then fainted. 

It was all it took for Dean to resist knocking the shit out of the doctor that suggested in a nasty voice that Sam was faking for attention. That was the last thing in the world Sam would do. Sam was a kid who actively tried to reassure everyone that he was happy and well-adjusted, even when he was stressed or sad or sick. Hell would freeze over before Sam would fake a hysterical fit.

Aunt Miriam was standing outside Sam’s room while Dean sat by his bed, hoping against all hope that his brother would wake up. He heard her enter the room, but didn’t turn to look at her until she spoke.

“I made a few calls.”

Dean turned to look at her: he had never seen her look so haggard and stressed before, not even in the middle of a hunt. It suddenly struck Dean that there was now more grey than ash blond in her hair.

“Unless you know another doctor, I don’t think that’s going to help much.”

She scoffed, and slumped into the chair on the other side of Sam’s bed. “No doctors, but you remember Pamela Barnes?”

He did. He thought she was hot too. “What about her?”

“She’s pretty young, but she’s got a really strong gift. Psychic. She’ll sometimes call Bobby and leave tips about a case that’s just about to come across his desk. I figured if she couldn’t tell us what’s wrong with Sam, no one could.”

“We don’t even know if Sam has a supernatural problem.” “No we don’t” Miriam stated, “but this is too sudden and serious for me to think otherwise. Besides, even if it’s a completely natural issue Pam will be able to tell us that too.”

Did they really have a choice?  
******************************************************************************  
They were all set and ready to go. Miriam hovered in the doorway leading to the hall: this would give her some space to ward off any curious nurses who came to check. Pamela and Dean had drawn the curtains closer to Sam’s bed for even more privacy. There were candles burning on the stand near the bed and Pamela was leaning over Sam, her hands on either side of his face. 

“I’m going to try and call him back to the present. Whatever is happening, it seems to be pulling Sam deep into his subconscious mind. Whether that issue is mental, physical, or supernatural, I should be able to get him, or at least get an idea of what’s happening.” Dean didn’t know how she could be so sure, but maybe she’s a good faker.

Pamela began chanting, fast and low, and the flames on the candles began to grow. Then she began calling.

“Sam! Sam! Sam!”

Sam’s eyes flew open, and he began gasping for breath.  
******************************************************************************  
The doctors were stumped. They didn’t know how Sam had woken up. They didn’t know how he had been hurt. They didn’t know if he had been hurt

They didn’t know anything. 

Neither did Dean.

Once the confused doctors left the room to get some discharge paperwork, Pamela, Dean, and Aunt Miriam crowded around the hospital bed and pressed Sam for what happened.

Sam kept his eyes firmly on his lap while he recounted a tale about John Winchester, their father who didn’t die until much later, about searching for a yellow-eyed demon, about Sam dying and Dean getting one year out of a demon deal, about the demon Lilith trying to trigger the Apocalypse, and about a Sam and Dean who helped raise Lucifer from hell.

He started stuttering when talking about this other Sam dragging Lucifer into some place called “the cage”, about Sam walking around for a year without a soul, about someone named Cas releasing some sort of monster that ate people, about Dean being trapped in some place called purgatory.

Sam looked up from his lap for the first time since he began talking, and said “The last thing I remember are these flashes of light falling from the sky. They were angels. The angels were falling.”  
******************************************************************************  
At first Dean thought Sam had just hallucinated when he was down, but the more he thought about it, the more Pamela’s theory made sense. “Have you ever thought about the possibility of alternate timelines?”

No he hadn’t, because he wasn’t a huge geek, but apparently he had better start thinking about them. If her theory was correct, then Sam just got a huge load of information blasted right into his brain, and the knowledge of how their life could have gone was sobering to say the least. 

What were they going to do?

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic so that's exciting! Hopefully this will be the first of a series so stick around.  
> Also this was inspired by a dream so that's always fun:)


End file.
